Coronavirus is only about eating bats?
I don’t think this apocalyptic dark scientific story is a fiction. And the more, I don’t think its origin is only about eating bats.
The risk of foodborne or waterborne illnesses has already surrounded the humanity but people just did not care that much till a monster virus came around and started to threaten people’s health diabolically.
Coronavirus is not the only one that can knock out average human but nowadays it is the most popular one and humanity do not have an antidote to inactivate it. But as I said, it is not only one. There are a lot of pathogenic microorganisms that can use another living organism’s body as a host and hurt them. The more dangerous fact about these creatures, some of them do not need a living organism to survive, they can be fully alive on your food.
In recent times, we have been seeing a lot of restaurants, around us, that do not hesitate to expose their kitchen to their customers, confidently.
There is a good reason behind this kind of transparency and this reason is for in favour of the customers. The essential aim of this transparency is restaurants want to prove that, before they serve food for the customer, they are considering everything appropriate in the aspects of hygiene concept. For this reason, their cooks prepare the food you ordered in front of your eyes and they are demonstrating to you that your food is prepared in hygienic conditions just like you always do at home, hence you can relievedly have this food knowing that is %100 healthy.
However, are all these enough to convince you?
I think your answer should be a certain ‘’ No’’, and there are many reasons than just a single one here not to be convinced with that.
They already know, exposing their kitchen will not be enough to give you %100 mind comfort about hygiene concept but the sector has solutions for other worries too.
This sector knows how to trick your mind to leave the hygiene concept aside, even it is just for a while, and it focuses your beautiful mind on something else. And then It is offering you a combination of alluring concepts that you can’t easily say ‘’No’’.
I think, manipulating people with delicious food is not a big deal for a good cook. A not long time ago, I was passing by a small café and I felt like I was surrounded cookies with cinnamon scent and it took me just a second to decide to enter that café and order cookies with cinnamon. But wait! Do you know what happened next? The lady passed inside of the open kitchen and lifted the glass bell and just grabbed the cookie with her right hand, right there, in front of me. It was a big disappointment for me because I know about e.coli and the rest of its close friends. After all, cinnamon cookies were no longer delicious snacks but some messed up stuff for me.
Here what I want to focus now: Homemade food is also handmade just like other foods but there is a point that we shouldn’t skip here. Since the home offers cosiness, comfort, and relaxation, food preparation is happening under these conditions and most of the time we don’t wear gloves at our kitchen right?
I would like to ask you that if you can tell me that you see cooks are wearing gloves in open kitchen restaurants.
Sometimes they do but it is not very often, right? Because they already ensure you that their hands are very clean and there is no contaminant on the surface which can be seen by you. At the end of the day, they prepare the food, and they cook it in front of you albeit there is an invisible side of the show. This part of the show happens before cooks come to the countertop and they start to prepare your delicious, homemade food in that cosy kitchen.
Neglecting wearing gloves, just because they believe that they made you sure about they consider hygiene, cleanliness and health concepts, is not good. Listen to me carefully here and I will let you know how it is dangerous and risky.
As the full control in the hands of the cooks who don’t wear gloves during food preparation or service, our hygiene and food safety expectations at the mercy of them and washing hands properly or not is no one’s but only their choice.
We have read thousands of articles and watched hundreds of videos about scandalous things happened at various restaurant chains before they serve the food. Do you remember Ikea’s almond cake with e.coli? Remember it, Ikea confirmed that coliform bacteria have been found in their almond cake. This exactly meant the cake, they served to the customer, were sh*tty.
Mc Donald’s also happened highlights of the news and it was about ecoli again. McDonald’s drinks fountain was contaminated by the hands of its staff. You can find some videos related to the issue via YouTube.
These news, articles, and videos about scandals of food serving companies were warning to the audience, as a potential customer of all these chains, about how they keep the food in an unhealthy environment and how they were neglecting hygiene concepts while their cook was preparing it.
Moreover, we also heard, read and even sometimes we have seen that, the biggest fast-food chains had no interest in to consider hygiene issues into consideration and to ensure avoiding possible health risks. That’s why many of us were all ears, when experts were talking about this covered news like ‘’e.coli was found in the meal of A Certain Food Chain’’ and while slowly we were turning our back to them, we were turning our face to the homemade food options.
But how do they ensure that homemade food is safer when it is compared to other options in health and hygiene aspects? They probably mean that they do not use harmful fats in homemade food. Plus, they don’t offer you frozen food, they offer and serve you fresh food with healthy ingredients. That’s fine but there are some ingredients that you can not control to add or not to add in food.
Ingredients might not be limited with greens, meatball, and some cheese. It might contain something else too.
The essence of the matter here is if the food is free from germs.
the causes of the many foodborne illnesses are the pathogens. They can transfer from hand to food very quickly and very easily. The worse, they are invisible to your sight. In a nutshell, they are bloody monsters and I wouldn’t be exaggerating even a tiny bit, if I would call them ‘’bloody sneaky monsters’’ since the diseases they cause might even kill you.
Look corona doing that now…
Let me touch upon what exactly e.coli is. We hear its name almost every news about food safety as it is relevant to health threats. Well, e.coli and its friends are germs which maintain their life in feaces. I think it makes sense why I called Ikea’s almond cake sh*tty, now. Imagine their lifestyle and do not expect them to behave any better to you.
Nevertheless, ecoli is tested to indicate if there are pathogens in the food or water at laboratories and helps the laboratory people to decide if the food or water is safe for human health. Well, it is a kind of indicator.
Since E.coli and other pathogenic bacteria can be easily carried by ‘’touching’’ the contaminated area, preparing food with bare hands might be the reason several of diseases.
Hands are the best carrier for these germs when they need to go from one place to another.
Did you know %80 of diseases spread by contaminated hand contact according to The World Health Organization?
If I need to give a sample for these diseases, I can say diarrheal infection is most common among them and unfortunately this illness may end up deaths when children suffer from it. Touching food is enough to spread the germ that causes this disease. This is studied by many scientific bodies and organizations.
‘’Touching’’, here, doesn’t address any person to person contact, it means touching one’s own body (like scratching the nose or touching one’s mouth for some random reason).
FDA also advises that hands must be washed after the following:
Eating,
Drinking,
Using tobacco,
Coughing,
Sneezing,
Using tissue,
Preparing raw animal products,
Handling dirty equipment, and
Touching the body
And Hands must be washed before;
Making food and
Putting on gloves to make food.
After hearing this, I don’t think you will ever be comfortable to eat foods prepared without washed hands because this e.coli might come to your food from anywhere that your food contact with. That means when it is touched, it might be contaminated.
You or the cooks of the restaurants or the vendors on the streets are preparing homemade food by their hands. If you see their hands are bare, this situation should bring some questions to your mind. Did they wash their hands well just before they were preparing the food? How did they wash their hands? Did they use an anti-bacterial soup? Or did they just put their hands under tap and water spilt over them?
That being the case, not wearing gloves is a huge curtain in front of the food preparation level. As we don’t see what was going on there before the preparation, we will never know what we eat actually.
You should put pressure on any kind of food supplier to consider hygiene and food safety. And you should warn them not to touch your food with bare hands at all. If they can’t do that, just don’ buy anything from them.
Otherwise, you may be putting your life in danger.
Yes, the situation at that much extremes indeed…
References:
1-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC Quick Reference Guide for Public Information on Infection Control.
2- https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/this-is-ikea/newsroom/press-release/bacteria-in-ikea-almond-cake/
4-https://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/ucm064458.htm
